@revk on a scale from 1 to not-worth-the-bother, how much of a faff is it to sell electronics within the UK? do you have to register somewhere and jump through hoops?
@jackeric not the person you asked but I’ve been involved in shipping consumer electronics. The big thing is CE marking, which is a self certification process but involves various third party tests to ensure you’re compliant.
@jackeric as someone says, CE marking. We make and sell firewall/routers and the process to have it all tested is expensive. But it all starts in the design and ensuring compliance with electrical and safety and EMC requirements.
That said we also sell some “components”. ESP32 boards for hobbyists, etc. They are very explicitly sold as assembled PCBs to use in your own projects/products. The ESP itself has CE for the module, but as a component we don’t CE certify the board.
IANAL
@jackeric for us that was a combination of physical testing for the casing (they threw a HUGE ball bearing at it to make sure it wouldn’t shatter) and radio emissions testing on the radios.
@jackeric how involved all this is depends what you’re shipping. The first time round wasn’t too bad because it was mostly pre-certified components put together. The second time was a nightmare involving coordination between our testing company and the hardware engineers in China, who would provide barely coherent test documentation. At one point I ended up on a two hour taxi ride to reflash the device being tested with new firmware.
@jon the projects I have in mind are to put an ESP32 onto a custom PCB with some peripherals, 3D printed case, maybe an engraved faceplate, and make a nice peripheral for Niche Computer Game and/or possibly model railways, and sell small numbers to fellow enthusiasts at about £100.
the Gatoino project inspires and daunts me - it's an Arduino, custom PCB, two servos using mirrors to deflect a laser to entertain cats - the designer can't do more than sell the STLs and PCB design with a nice BOM and assembly guide, for about £15, and the buyer must order the PCBs and print the case and mechanism. the designer is in the EU and anything more than this is not worth the squeeze apparently
@jackeric firstly, I am not a lawyer. Having said that assuming the components you’re attaching aren’t too exotic I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s worth reading the requirements for CE marking and seeing if you can entirely self-certify, what you’re talking about is very different to getting buyers from major retailers involved. Emissions is the hard hit and the ESP32 more or less has you covered there unless you’re adding extra radios.